Gaming Mass Effect Series

My favourite interrupt is where you push that guard out the window. Even if I'm playing 100% Paragon I always make that interrupt.

One thing I liked about ME3 was that there was basically a 'story only' difficulty. Because the story is so important this difficulty setting allows the players to enjoy that above the combat if they wanted to. It's not important to me as I enjoy the combat, but for someone who isn't good at it then it's a great way to enjoy the game.

So I decided to play through the trilogy again because I haven't played it in ages and I want to. I checked the achievement list on my xbox version and I, uh, never actually finished ME1 on it! I have completed it on PC, but it seems I haven't on the xbox.

 

I've been thinking about doing a Tour De Mass Effect recently as well. My primary motivator is to play ME3 again, actually.

 

A Mass Effect trilogy playthrough is also on my list of things to do. I've not played through the whole thing with ME3's DLC in place - I just played them directly before Cronos Station.

ME3 is my favourite of the trilogy, but I'm willing to bet it'll be even better with Leviathan's reveal in it's proper place, and with Citadel just before the finale (Omega's a bunch of fun too, but not really story-important).

I also want to go through Dragon Age before Inquisition comes out, and I've got about 60 unplayed game sitting on my shelves. Way more good games than time.

 

Some slights can't be forgotten...nor forgiven. It's been nearly two years but there's still a dull ache there. IMO, the utter nonsense that permeated those final 20 or so minutes really ruined the franchise. Many people argued and will continue to argue that it's the journey and not the destination that matters, but if at the end of the journey you plow headfirst into a big pile of steaming, rotten ****, then what does it matter how awesome the previous thousand miles of the journey were? Even if I ever cared to own the trilogy again, I'd find little joy in replaying it when I. CAN'T. CHANGE! That goddam ending!

Sent from my Samsung Mega Astromech Droid

 

Eh after this long I can let the ending go, but if you asked me when I first played it that would be a much different story.

07jonesj I never bought Omega but I let my Xbox Live subscription run out. Maybe I can find a free trial code and then purchase it. I've not done a complete ME3 playthrough with all of the DLCs properly-timed yet either.

 

BLemelisk You don't need Xbox Live to buy and download DLC.

It's a little pricey. Citadel earned that £12/$15 price tag, but I feel Omega should have been the same price as Leviathan. Regardless, if you have the money, it's arguably the best assault sequence of the game. It also contains another couple of minutes of awesome space battles, has more of Aria, and more of Omega, one of my favourite locations in the ME universe.

I believe it contains the only class-specific interrupt of the whole trilogy too, where a dual dialogue choice is present, but a third option is available to an engineer.

 

For me, Omega's best value was in the new weapons mods (sniper rifle thermal scope has now become the terror of Cerberus mooks) and the Flare bonus power. I've chosen that for my adept and things get seriously out of hand. Otherwise it was okay, but not essential. Leviathan had more kick to it.

 

Omega was the last one I played and I really didn't enjoy it all. I guess I didn't care enough about Omega or Aria and her friend/rival/lover(?). I did really like Leviathan and of course Citadel was a great goodbye to everyone.

 

I haven't played any of the ME3 DLCs. Are they all worth it?

 

Omega doesn't add anything to the story really, but having Javik the Prothean really does add a whole new level to the game.
Plus the Extended Cut makes the endings far more acceptable.

 

I absolutely loathed Omega, Leviathan was interesting enough but not crucial. I really liked Citadel though. It added some much needed goodbyes, especially for the ME2 squad and it lets you use Wrex again for the DLC's missions.

 

Citadel gave me uncontrollable fanboy excitement

 

From Ashes + Extended Cut = Essential.

Leviathan I enjoyed quite a bit.

Have yet to get around to getting either Citadel or Omega DLC.

Also need to re-do ME1 with twin aims of 1) Keep Wrex alive and 2) Talk Saren into blowing his head off!

 

Easiest way to get Wrex to stand down is to do his loyalty mission when it becomes available. In that instance, you can talk him down without having to pass a paragon/renegade check. Actually, in general do every available thing in the game and only go to Virmire when you've totally exhausted the other missions and all assignments. Also, don't neglect the Paragon/Renegade bars in ME1 when allotting points - all my characters have had at least one maxed out, and one had both maxed out. The one feature I really enjoyed with my subsequent ME1 playthroughs was that, since the soldier was my first character and he got the assault rifle, sniper rifle, and shotgun achievements all my subsequent characters had the option of picking up an extra weapon talent. My infiltrator turned into a light soldier with assault rifles and every other class became a long-range threat with sniper rifles.

Have you thought about what class to play as next time around? Honestly I think that's one of the big draws of ME - not only can you play out a different series of events within the story, but you can play the game in so many different ways. At first I thought I was just going to do a soldier run and that was it. Then I fell in love with the infiltrator's scoping and dropping and the vanguard's berserk rampaging. After that I had to try the sentinel's bag-of-tricks approach; ME3 really turned that class into the ultimate jack of all trades. I didn't think I would much like the engineer or the adept, but by ME2 and especially ME3 both of them clean house.

 

Never found that loyalty mission first time around! Gonna to correct that, trust me.

 

The problem with a cold run through of ME1 without savegame+ is the difficulty of tackling missions that need higher paragon or renegade scores to resolve things in a worthwhile way without having to grind out levels.

I stalled out of a playthough a little while back because I was just continually having to settle for the "satisfactory" quest outcomes, hostages were getting killed, etc.

 

Just pick the charm or intimidate bonuses when you level up and you'll pretty much never fail a test. My least favourite part of ME1 is definitely still the Mako sections. Uh, that handles like a piece of crap.

 

The only thing I really hated about the Mako was the 50% XP penalty for killing things with it. Granted you can disable that with console commands, but still - I enjoyed having that kind of firepower handy. Maybe the handling wasn't so much an issue because I did more stationary sniping than running and gunning at close range.

Wrex's loyalty mission triggers just like Garrus and Tali's - talk to him often enough and he'll talk about how he left Tuchanka, during which he'll mention that he swore an oath to recover his family armor from a Turian collector. That puts the mission in your journal. Alternately, at any time you can land on the planet Tuntau, in the Phoenix system of the Argus Rho cluster and on entering the pirate outpost Wrex will tell you about it. It's a pretty standard assignment, although the layout allows you to have some fun with it. The guys outside can either be sniped from high ground or, if you can't make the shots, the setup allows you to jump the Mako off a cliff and land it right next to them (which is a pretty damn awesome entrance). I found out that if you announce your entry into the building by overloading a power conduit on the upper balcony you can kill half the pirates and make the rest of the fight much easier. It's a cluttered floor and the enemies tend to run around a lot and use immunity liberally.

 

The controls for the Mako was terrible

 

The mako wasn't great but I liked it better than scanning planets.

 

Scanning was tedious, but ME3 made gathering resources much easier. Driving awkwardly around a planet just to pick up some debris often felt like a huge waste of time.

 

Oh lord, I hated planet-scanning in ME2. It was okay on my first time going through the game, but on subsequent playthroughs I started to realize just how pointless and dull it was. It got to the point where if I wanted to do another playthrough I would use the savegame editor tool to give myself more money and resources than I could use. TAKE THAT PLANET SCANNING.

 

Planet scanning did get a little boring, although with ME1 and ME2 completion bonuses you start with about 50,000 of every element. That's probably more than enough eezo to get you through the game, and it doesn't take much to pick up enough of the others. The one plus was that you essentially had an unlimited budget for research upgrades.

 

On consoles Scanning is important cause you know

DAT CREW!

 

Okay. So I just finished Mass Effect 3. I'd heard a lot about the ending but I don't think anything could've prepared me for it. Just.......what? I've no words.